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A Green Witch

12:18:00 PM

The Witch Who Walks the Green Path has a million different definitions, maybe she is indefinable all together. They hold those old keys of land and sky and sea in her hands. He strews the herbs of blessing and bane and drinks of the balance of life and death. Her gourd holds medicines and poisons alike and they take only what they need from the unfurling abundance of the green world. A green witch is an animist and spiritual naturalist, a healer and hexer in turn, she obeys nothing but the laws of nature and her own will. Her disciplines are the natural sciences and her values are those in-keeping with the natural order of things. They are proud practitioners of that low magic, that magia naturalis and fear nothing but the absence of growing things. Nature; unbridled and without a master is the only force we can prove without a doubt through observation carries an absolute power over our lives and our choices. It is indiscriminate, genderless, all-encompassing and without bias. As the hurricane rips apart homes so does it fling new life on to remote islands, giving way to new ecosystems and forms of life. And just as our elders are taken from us after withering away, so does nature give to us the very ability to make children, full of potential. And really, that’s what the beauty in spiritual naturalism, earth veneration and nature worship is; the potential within the smallest seed or the greatest storm to make something unpredictable, new and beautiful in all its terror and wonder. Ever present, always changing, always in flux and at odds with our perception of order; the land, sky and sea, the sun and moon, the weather and the steady orbit of our planet- truly, this whole system, is the closest thing to an all-powerful entity I can see. Maybe some practitioners consider themselves outside the realm of nature, maybe some see themselves as masters above nature, but I see no other way to be but part of the ecosystem. We are all playing some crucial, insignificant role in the grand scheme of things, and I play my part in perfumes and incense, in oils and tinctures, in powders and unguents, in wood-rot and skins. You may work your will above and beyond this dirty earth, but I see no magic without it. I sense nothing but life and death...

My green work tastes of… cinnamon and bourbon, of anise and spice; of warmth and of lust and sun

My green work looks of... living vines and ivy; everywhere and unsuspecting

Along the green path there winds roads red and light and dark; roads of those bloody and sensuous bonds of summer where rabbits proliferate and bees pollinate flowers and those roads of white healing stone and sacred bundles; and, even those shadowy roads down the dark spiral where the dead and the dreaming wander. The Green Path of Witchcraft roots throughout the world and binds us all.

My Red Work is all about warm beauty; flowers and spices, mirrors and vulva, cowrie and breasts. It smells of flesh and fresh flowers, it burns like fire and soothes like the sea. Its a well of sensual warmth in waves through the flesh, it's hardness and passion and lust at its best. Red green work is in the dance of the bee and the flower, in the mating of beasts and the writhing of the land as it turns in the summer heat.

My White Work on the green path is made of stone and bone, cuts and herbs, of living things and many more dead. It's the path of fertile rabbits and sacred clay, of light and peace and purifying things. It isn't clean, it isn't pretty. It's witchcraft; brutal, simple and willful.

My dark green path is a spiral of ebony and poppy dreams that lead to the dark heart of the labyrinth. The only way out, is through. And all things die. Even green things. The shadow haunts all things that live; stars and men alike we all have to travel between worlds at one point or another. Death is not an ending; it is a journey, a pilgrimage we all must take and it terrifies most of us, the prospect of this journey to the unknown. The more a witch understands this and the more they learn the roads and paths on the other-side, the less afraid she is- for there is little unknown.

Green Path Literature Looks Like...

Green Magic by Lesley Gordon

Working The Roots: Over 400 Years of Traditional African American Healing by Michele Elizabeth Lee

Mastering Herbalism by Paul Huson

The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacolo​gy and Its Applications by Christian Rätsch

Pharmako Trilogy: Poeia, Dynamis, Gnosis by Dale Pendell

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers by Hoffman and Schultes